


become the sea, float away with me

by littlelionvanz



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:52:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelionvanz/pseuds/littlelionvanz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing makes sense because neither has the words to explain. It just is and it hurts. But when they’re together, the hurt doesn’t reach their hearts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	become the sea, float away with me

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this was less about a structured beginning - middle - end plot, but sort of like, grabbing snippits of memories. Seeing things as Annie would see them. So it's all a bit rambly.

This is what Annie Cresta remembers.

_(Let your hair down, it’s so lovely when it’s down.)_

It’s tangled, it still smells of dead sea weed. She didn’t sleep, she feels dead too. She leaves it down because Ma said to. She wears the dress Ma picks out as well, the yellow one with the shell buttons. Ma’s made a large breakfast, Angel and Marsh are already eating, wearing their reaping finest. Their second year, Annie’s third. They’re so excited in a way that their anticipation for something amazing to happen makes Annie sad. They don’t want to volunteer, but they want to get reaped.

_(Those who volunteer never coming back.)_

Ma tells them what an honor it would be a tribute anyways.

_(Then why weren’t you?)_

 

Music is playing in the village square. This is obviously a time for happiness. People come in by the masses, blissful chatter. Children holding hands, flowers floating on the breezes. The stage in front of the Justice Building is alive with the provincial mayors, former victors, and the District Four escort and team.

(Keep your head straight, don’t smile. Don’t volunteer. Let them have their fun. Let them have it without you)

A boy volunteers, a girl doesn’t.

So they call Annie’s name. _Fuck_. She doesn’t cry but Angel does- she finds his face first. He tries to smile but it keeps falling. He doesn’t hug her in the Justice Building but Marsh does. Ma does too. She tells her that’s proud of her darling Annie and how well she’ll do.

_(But Annie why are you_ crying _?)_

 

The boy won’t stop talking. Annie refuses to learn his name, though their escort Pan, says it over and over. Learn his name, and she’ll miss him. He’s 18 and he tries to be nice.

_(Is now the time to be nice?)_

Finnick is already in the room when she’s brought back to attention. He smiles at her. And she hates him for it. They met a few times before this. When they were small and their fathers drank together. He was quiet then. He’s false now. 19 and he seems so much older, but younger at the same time. It almost makes her want to feel sad for him, if there was any room left in her heart to do him that favor. Now she’s just angry. Nothing seems fair.

“You’re in good shape,” he says, making her all-too aware that he is looking at her. Silently, she thanks her mother for making her leave her hair down. “You look like you could tear someone apart if you want to.”

“I don’t want to,” Annie whispers, mostly to herself. Mostly for the sake of disagreeing with him.

Finnick’s false face falls just a little, just enough for her to see the crack. His voice is quiet when he says: “Do you want to die?”

  


This is what Annie Cresta remembers.

Finnick told her to listen. To watch. Be ready for anything.

She hears the nice boy’s screams before his body falls and his head rolls apart from him.

She hears the canon.

She hears the noise that was ripped from her throat.

She runs and runs and runs. Branches scratch her face, she is aching she is screaming still. This is real. He is dead.

Her mind is red. Like his blood. She can’t see past it.

Always she is running.

  


Annie remembers the crack. Then the boom. Then the wave. She will not die here. There’s something making her want to live. She’s swimming, kicking, scrambling for the surface. Debris cut into her, snagging her flesh. But she kicks and holds onto branches.  Canon after canon after canon and she’s not dead yet. Night day, night day. She is still here.

She is both alive and she isn’t.

She wakes screaming and she’s put under again. Each time she wakes, Finnick is by her side. Restraints tie her down because as Finnick said, “You keep trying to harm the doctors.”

This isn’t real. None of this is real. She sleeps and she’s drowning. She needs to run. Her heart is pounding. A mask is strapped to her mouth, “To help you breathe,” because otherwise its ragged and strained and choked. This goes on for days.

Someone says, “She keeps fighting to survive, but she doesn’t realize that she’s already won.”

“She’s in shock.”

  


A conch is held to her ear. It’s smooth and cold. “Can you hear the waves?” Finnick says. “Sounds like home, doesn’t it.”

_(But Annie, why are you crying?)_

“I want to go home.”

  


Interviews are delayed until she can form proper sentences and be trusted not to try and run. Finnick is holding her hand, reminding her of what’s real. He tells her what to say, what to make everyone happy. She doesn’t want to make anyone happy. Finnick apologizes for them. Because they don’t care.

She parrots him anyways. People cheer. A train carries her home. They have her pumped with so much stabilizer, she doesn’t feel alive. She doesn’t feel anything. She needs Finnick’s hand so she doesn’t fall over.

She needs Finnick.

She doesn’t know why.

  


People visit her new home on the coast, in the Victor’s Village. They bring baskets of food to warm it, Ma throws a party. It’s broadcast to the Capitol. Annie is not there.  Ma didn’t trust her behave. She asked her to stay upstairs.

_(Thank you.)_

The word _behave_ leaves her mouth feeling sour.

She falls asleep under her bed, holding Finnick’s conch to her ear.

She didn’t dream.

  


People stop coming around. She is left alone. And she hates it and she loves it. She accepts Finnick though, and they don’t speak, so much as they mostly sit on her balcony over-looking the ocean. He doesn’t ask her questions that she’s grateful not to answer. Not that she’d have answers to them anyways.

Sometimes she drifts off, eyes closed and she feels herself being rocked by water, dragged by a ghost current. Oxygen becomes scarce. Annie has forgotten how to breathe.

_(Do you hear the ocean, Annie?)_

Finnick’s palms are warm as they cup her ears, making the crashing water against rock echo in her head. She focuses on that sound. The sound of home. Of warm sand, small fish, sunsets, and salt. He drags her back up to the surface.

She realizes she’s crying and he doesn’t ask why. He leaves the tears where they are, so she knows that its real. And that she shouldn’t have to hide. She hates this so much. And he understands.  

And she loves him for that.

  


Annie feels as though her home is too crowded.

Finnick never asked her to stay the night and neither did she. She crawled into his bed because it was empty and warm and it’s a bed and she doesn’t care. She’s just so tired. And she can see that he is too.

So they sleep.

At some point in the night, Finnick begins panting. He’s dreaming, and he’s sweating. He’s afraid too, Annie realizes.

She cups a hand over his ear.

_(Can you hear the ocean, Finnick?)_

It’s the only time they touch.

  


Some days are easier than others. When people think you’re crazy, they like to leave you alone. Sometimes she doesn’t leave her home, sometimes she sneaks into Finnick’s even if he isn’t there because he left her a key and his bed is the only she can sleep in. She doesn’t know why.

They tell her to get a hobby. They tell her to talk to Mags, Finnick’s mentor. She’s old and shrivelled, but kind.

Mags teaches her to thread needles, to bead shells and pearls. To weave nets and to make use of her hands. Focus on patterns, occupy the mind.

Annie is grateful for Mags in the way that presumed liars are grateful for that person that believes them wholeheartedly.

She learns that Mags is the origin of the trick with the conch and she loves her for that.

  


Annie is 15 years old when District 4 cheers her onto the Capitol. She’s 17 when they’ve forgotten her entirely.

Four tributes have since died.

She always thinks about the nice boy.

And then his head.

_(But Annie,_ why _are you crying?)_

 

Annie remembers year-end festival that she didn’t plan on attending. There’s a frost in the air that skirts off the ocean in gentle, skin-tickling breezes. She doesn’t want to be here. But Finnick is holding her hand and doesn’t dare let it go.

The stars are clear, everyone is happy. Annie feels like she could be too. If only just a bit.

The food smells lovely and makes her feel safe.

The music is loud and it clogs her head, but its either that or other things to occupy it.

Annie shakes her head when they demand for she and Finnick to take the floor.

“I can’t dance,” she tells him.

The music isn’t entirely slow, but not too fast either. There’s clapping and Finnick is laughing. His laugh makes her laugh too.

Annie never could dance. But he helps, with the guidance of hands against her back, and gripping her palm tight. They spin and people cheer. She stops thinking and she can’t stop laughing and she doesn’t know why because nothing is funny.

Finnick is looking at her and that makes her face burn.

He looks at her all the time, but his eyes are warm and the corners of his mouth are quirked just a bit. And he bites his bottom lip in a way that makes her aware of where his hands are.

She pushes him away now because her skin is itchy and people are staring.

She wants to throw up.

_(But_ Annie _, why are you crying?)_

 

Finnick follows her back to his house and she sits on the front step. She feels angry but she isn't. Just anxious. Ashamed?

Finnick looks sad. He says

"I've wanted to die almost every day before I knew you."

She says

"I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm sorry."

"Don't, ever."

Finnick tries to kiss her, but doesn’t because his hands were shaking and he didn't notice himself crying. He couldn't touch her and she didn't know why.

 

Nothing makes sense because neither has the words to explain. It just is and it hurts. But when they’re together, the hurt doesn’t reach their hearts.

  


She realizes that her best work with Mags is when Finnick is in the Capitol. Ten times the effort of focusing and perfecting.

Ten times the effort of trying not to lose it because she’s so lonely without him.

He comes home and sleeps for nearly two days, and when he wakes, she shows him the necklaces and other decorative bits.

He asks which is for him.

And she says, “All of it.”

_(Oh... you mean the_ necklaces _)_

  


Annie remembers the day she knew she loved him.

She came to his home one morning before the rest of the world woke. She could hear him snoring from downstairs but when she opened the door of his bedroom, he woke immediately. He smiled with hooded eyes and only enough effort that a sleeping boy could.

She knew she loved him in the way the smile stayed on his lips even after he fell back asleep.

She loved him in the way that she couldn’t remember a day when she didn’t.

He was kind and he was sad and he loved her back.

She remembers how soft his hair was between his fingers, and the way it smelled of clean linen when she pressed her nose to it, just behind the shell of his hear.

  


He brings her presents from the Capitol. She likes books the best.

She never asks where he gets them, but he once said that he had rich friends who liked to give away their things.

Annie loves one the most-  about the ancient gods that existed across a wide sea in a long-lost land.

There was a beautiful god named Apollo who championed the sun.

She looks at Finnick, who gives her a questioning look that breaks out into a grin.

He turns onto his back and lets the sun take him. He likes to dig his feet into the sand and drums his fingers across his bare chest and he is so beautiful she can’t look at him.

_(My Apollo)_

  


Annie remembers the day he came home with bruises.

And bite marks.

Someone made him their toy.

And he couldn’t look at her.

He was mumbling something about being unclean.

He swatted her hands away and stopped breathing for several seconds.

“Where’s Annie?” he began saying like a chant. “Where’s my Annie.”

His eyes were glassy and confused. He couldn’t stop shaking.

Finnick never told her why he went to the Capitol so often or what he did there for President Snow or who his friends were. And there was a part of Annie that didn’t want to know.

And none of that actually matters because she’s the one cleaning up the mess the Capitol made of him.

She cups his ears and that helps him calm down enough to get to the bath. The water is scalding but he doesn’t even feel it. She washes him with such care that she can see his heart breaking.

And then he looks at her. At her. With such ache and shame.

And she knows this was something she was never meant to see.

He says, “I’m sorry,” so quiet and so guilty.

She says, “Don’t, ever.”

  


He doesn’t go back for several months, claiming a boating injury.

Annie whispered, “Stay.”

He sighed, “Always.”

  


Finnick never touches Annie because he is afraid.

She dreams about the touches he can’t give her.

Because the Capitol stole them.

Made them repulsive and dirty.

And he can’t do that to her. Not to his Annie.

They both wake so obvious with their need for each other that it makes them want to cry.

  


Annie never realized how strange her behavior was until she wasn’t with Finnick. Because Ma always pointed it out.

_(What are you laughing at? What are you staring at? Why are you covering your ears, are you three years old?)_

She never realized it because with Finnick, everything just seemed to flow so natural, when things were good. Did he just never point it out? Was he just being polite.

 

Her sister asks, “Do you still think of what happened?”

Annie says yes.

Ma asks why, which was said like “What’s the point?”

_(When did I ever get a choice?)_

_  
_She and Ma fight more times than Annie knows that she means to. Ma just doesn't _understand_ and that makes things difficult. Sometimes Annie really isn't  _okay_ and Ma doesn't know what to do, so she does nothing and that's easy. Sometimes she asks how to help but Annie doesn't know because it's been almost four years and nothing makes sense. 

Sometimes Ma gets frustrated when Annie isn't okay.

_(See, Finnick is over it?_ _)_

  


Snow talks about the Quarter Quell. And it doesn’t seem real. She and Finnick are sitting on his bed in stunned silence.

She can’t breathe. Neither can he.

She kisses him because she’s afraid. Because she’s angry. And because they won’t take him from her again they just won’t.

Her Finnick.

His Annie.

They say _‘I love you’_   like a promise and a prayer.

They say _‘I need you’_   like a plea and a fact.

His skin is warm where hers is chilled.

She lets him explore not because he is skilled but because he is kind and sad.

Their kisses are slow, as if they aim to stretch out time so that morning never comes.

But when it does, so do they.

  


Annie remembers that last morning when he held her.

She said, “I’m scared.”

He said, “Me too.”

_(But Finnick, why are_ you _crying?)_


End file.
